A lot of these measurements are educated guesses. If you need more or less of one thing or another, then by all means, fix it.

Start with a medium to large saucepan or skillet. At the very least, start with something you can cover (if you have a skillet and don’t have a lid for it, try some aluminum foil). Put your gas on high and leave it there.

Melt the butter in the olive oil and saute the chopped onion for three to five minutes. Apply liberal amounts of cayenne pepper (or 1 teaspoon if you want. pansy.) and then as much salt and pepper as your heart desires (as you can see above, I tend only to use a pinch of each). Add the rice and saute for about three minutes.

The next step probably the most essential part: Add one cup of broth at a time, stirring occasionally. Don’t add another cup until the broth has been absorbed. The stirring is really only important towards the end of each addition; that is to say, you can just let it boil until most of the broth is absorbed and start stirring to make sure it doesn’t film over and stick to the bottom of the pan. It turns out that this is actually most important and most helpful when you’ve added all four cups of broth (hard to explain but you’ll definitely see what I mean. This kind of takes some time to learn when to start stirring and when you can sit around and read Playboy).

When you’ve reached the end of the broth, keep the gas on and definitely keep stirring. This time though, the rice should start sticking to itself. I tend not to stir it more than two or three minutes after it starts sticking to itself. From my experience, the rice tends to be a little too soft and doesn’t quite taste as good when you overcook it.

Once you’ve got your ball-o-rice (not necessarily the case), you can turn off the heat and add the cheeses. This probably doesn’t matter but I always start with the Parmesan; I usually put enough on that there’s kind of a film of Parmesan over the rice. Then I add three to four slices of the pepper jack and leave it covered for about five minutes, strictly to let the cheese melt (a lot of recipes say you have to let it sit while covered to make sure it finishes cooking properly, but I don’t buy into that. What’ve I been doing for the last 30 minutes? Cooking it). Then stir it again and you’re good to go.

Serve and give yourself a pat on the back for making something more sophisticated than macaroni and cheese but equally delicious.

This recipe makes one serving of extremely filling delicious goodness. It’s the kind of full that, if this is your dinner, you will probably be skipping breakfast–if not lunch. If you’re serving this for two, I’d really only suggest vegetables and coffee on the side. Maybe a bread roll if you’re daring. I’m assuming “for two” means for a date, so I included coffee because the risotto’s so filling you’ll want to be asleep to let your stomach process it in peace. But if you’re on a date-type-thing, you’ll want to be awake to process the goodness together.